


His Iron Heartbeat

by Atisenia



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 2013 Fairy Tale Challenge, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Magic, But not that much, Drowning, Gen, Just inspired, The Frog Prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atisenia/pseuds/Atisenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One minute Sherlock's underwater and drowning, the next he's safely positioned on the shore and there's a strange little glass ball in his pocket that hasn't been there before.<br/>There's no sign of outside help but, surely, he couldn't have rescued himself. Could he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Iron Heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this challenge [here](http://youlighttheskyfanfiction.tumblr.com/post/36829122226/2013-fairy-tale-writing-art-challenge-prompt-colours). Based on the Polish version of _The Frog Prince_ but rather loosely, I think.  
>  I'm not a native speaker, so there will probably be mistakes. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.  
> Mostly gen, but it's up to you.
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://atisenia.tumblr.com/post/46868047922/his-iron-heartbeat)

His lungs are burning.

He’s been underwater for exactly three minutes and eighteen seconds and he knows that if he doesn’t surface soon, he’ll lose consciousness, go into respiratory and then probably cardiac arrest, and die. Without outside help, his chances of survival would be minuscule, bordering on nonexistent. Already, he’s been experiencing some lack of oxygen symptoms, feeling less in control, more likely to indulge the urge to _breathe in_.

And that would be a mistake. The epiglottis would close the airway, protecting the lungs from the water, which would actually be useless anyway.

His fingernail beds begin to turn blue. Still no sign of hallucinations.

He gives up and surfaces, drawing a deep breath. Breathing. How boring. How pedestrian. How utterly unhelpful. He scoffs at that basic need nearly as much as he resents food.

Still, he doesn’t quite fancy dying in his own bathtub. It would be so undignified.

He settles down in the cold water until it reaches his ears and listens to the faint click-click-click of his own heartbeat.

 

 

“I told you, Sherlock,” Lestrade says and tries to calm down the agitated detective. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“But you _must_ have,” Sherlock insists. “Even _you_ can’t be stupid enough to think I could rescue myself. So either one of your idiotic minions did it and now doesn’t want to admit it _or_ there was somebody else!

There are heads turning in their direction and pointed looks. Lestrade sighs and pushes Sherlock towards his office, ignoring his protests. Only when he locks the door, he turns to look at Sherlock who stands with his arms crossed and visibly displeased.

“Was it really necessary?” Sherlock asks.

“When you stop insulting my people, I’ll consider letting you talk wherever you want,” Lestrade says and Sherlock scowls at him. “What do you even expect of me?” the inspector asks with tired voice. “I _told_ you. We were too late. We _would have been_ too late. We didn’t even know where to start looking for you. There was no one there when we reached you. You know that. You were _conscious,_ for God’s sake. The current probably carried you to the shore.” Sherlock snorts. “What, it happens! And if someone did rescue you, why didn’t they stay?”

“He,” Sherlock corrects and Lestrade lifts his eyebrows. “It was a man,” Sherlock says, as if it physically pained him to explain such an obvious thing.

“Ok,” Lestrade says, slowly as to not say too much. “Fine, it was a man.” He looks at Sherlock with that pointed look that often translates as _that’s hardly the point but your brain works in mysterious ways_. Sherlock smirks. “But it doesn’t change a thing. Why would he vanish after he’d just rescued you?”

“Maybe he’s a criminal,” Sherlock says, hardly disturbed by the thought. “Or maybe he just doesn’t like you.”

“There was no sign of him though,” Lestrade insists, ignoring Sherlock’s remark. “He just walked out of the river, it wasn’t raining, he was _bound_ to leave some trail of dripping water and there was none. We checked.” Sherlock gives him a pointed look. “Oh, come _on_! You’re not seriously suggesting—“

“It’s a valid possibility,” Sherlock retorts with a defensive glare.

“He did _not_ walk underwater again,” Lestrade says. “Do you honestly believe that he would have chosen to go back to the Thames right after he managed to get out of there, carrying a significant weight? What, he fancied a swim?”

“Or he drowned,” Sherlock calmly states.

“He managed to rescue _you_!

“Well, the world is full of self-sacrificing idiots.”

 

 

Sherlock turns a little glass ball in his hand and frowns. He already subjected it to a variety of tests but it still seems to be just an ordinary little ball. Except when it isn’t.

The ball has approximately the size of a plum and is completely filled with black liquid or something in between liquid and gas. A person more ignorant than Sherlock might think it’s just black, but he knows better. The matter inside the ball seems to shift and turn, and sometimes even warms up in his touch, as if it was alive.

And there are times when Sherlock thinks it might be.

 

 

He was only a child when his father left.

Sherlock didn’t quite understand _why_ then. He knew Father was spending a lot of his time outside, with that woman he sometimes brought home with him when he thought no one was in the house. Sherlock often was though. He noticed that sometimes Father smelled like that lady. He saw how all of this always upset Mummy, so when she asked Father _again_ where did he go that day, Sherlock told her.

Mycroft didn’t speak to him for a week.

Mummy didn’t either but that was mainly because she was in her room practically all the time and when she wasn’t, she just looked at him with tired eyes, trying to smile but failing. It almost broke Sherlock’s little heart.

And then Father left and Sherlock decided he didn’t want it to hurt anymore.

That’s when the first iron ring clenched around his heart.

 

 

This time he nearly passes out. He _thought_ he had it under control, but then he choked on the water and frantically surfaced, coughing and trying to catch the air.

Still no hallucinations.

 

 

“We searched the bottom of the river as you _requested_ ,” Lestrade says, looking pointedly at the mess in Sherlock’s flat. “We found nothing.”

“You should keep looking then,” Sherlock says from where he watches the ball with the magnifying glass.

“Sherlock...” Lestrade starts, with that exasperated tone of his. “I can’t be chasing some ghost we’re not even sure exists.”

“I _know_ he exists,” Sherlock says and clenches his fist around the ball. It warms up again.

“Why do you even care?” Lestrade mutters, irritated. “It’s not like you to bother with people.” Sherlock’s only response is to glare at him. “Fine, don’t tell me. But I’m not wasting my resources on this wild chase anymore, do you hear me? I don’t care how many fake _official complaints_ you have prepared.”

“They stop being fake when there’s government involved,” Sherlock says.

“And you really think your brother would approve?” Sherlock is pointedly silent. “I thought so. Look, I know you don’t want to believe it, but are you sure it wasn’t a hallucination?”

Lestrade clearly expects Sherlock to snap at him, but the question is rather reasonable. He’s been wondering about the same thing after all.

“There’s actually no solid proof to support this theory,” he says. “Although the brain _can_ technically react in strange ways to lack of oxygen. But my wrists and ankles were bound and there was no sign of rope when you found me, was there? Also, I’d been in the water for almost four minutes. What are the odds that the river just _happened_ to wash me up in the last moment, and then proceeded to resuscitate me?” Lestrade frowns. “Besides, I’ve been recreating the exact circumstances—“

“Sherlock...” Lestrade interrupts him with a warning in his voice. “You are not going to tell me that you’ve been _deliberately_ trying to drown yourself, are you?” Sherlock just looks at him. “Oh, for— You can’t do that! At least not without supervision...”

“I think you’ll find that I can and I will, if it allows me to find what I need. It’s clearly beyond you and your bunch of incompetent idiots.” He continues before Lestrade has a chance to respond. “I’ve conducted six different experiments so far and I haven’t experienced a single hallucination.”

Lestrade stares at him with a mix of disbelief and irritation.

“Christ,” he finally says. “You really are a sick, self-destructive bastard, aren’t you?”

Sherlock only smiles at him like a poltergeist caught in the middle of a disarray, only just beginning to have fun.

 

 

He likes to listen to the sound of his heart. Sometimes he does that to establish he still has one, sometimes to justify his need to feel different, superior, less affected by these things called _emotions_.

And sometimes he just wishes to turn it off completely.

 

 

It was a very simple case that Sherlock had deemed a waste of his time when he circled the building the thieves were hiding in. It was made to look more complicated with all those seemingly unrelated burglaries. They were trying too hard to break the pattern though, and it could never suffice to trick a mind like Sherlock’s.

So he calculated the risks (minimal) and assessed the advantages (time, right method, reduced amount of idiots in one place) and found the properly middle-class house in a properly middle-class neighbourhood. Some people just tried too hard.

He sent Lestrade a text and ignored his phone calls, completely focused on the task at hand. The back door seemed like the best way to enter the building without being noticed. Getting in there would be child’s play and then—

His plans didn’t include the overprotective old woman from the next house and her vicious umbrella handle that connected with his skull.

 

 

He feels strange when he carries the ball with him. It seems to read his mind and whisper things to his subconscious. Sherlock blames it on the barely visible image of a hedgehog and its black and sparkling eyes.

 

 

“Why is your heart making that noise?” Molly asked him once, after he let her examine him.

He hadn’t eaten or slept in days and he just collapsed, which was normal enough for him. He kept forgetting his body had _needs_. But Molly didn’t know that and she made a fuss. Sherlock rather needed someone useful, easily manipulated and not _entirely_ stupid in the morgue, so he endured her examination and only once remarked that he wasn’t a corpse yet, so maybe she wasn’t exactly qualified.

“What noise would that be?”

“I-I don’t know,” she said and Sherlock rolled his eyes. “It’s just... it’s still beating but... it sounds like it’s _metal_ clicking on the bone.”

Sherlock just looked at her.

“Because it is.”

 

 

The second ring, he thinks, was a result of various factors.

He wasn’t a child anymore (well, technically he _was_ ) and maybe he didn’t quite understand how and why exactly did people interact but he did know what an “affair” meant by then.

Mummy _seemed_ to have finally recovered, though Sherlock saw the signs that were telling him a different story. He didn’t regret his father’s departure. If the man was determined to make people around him miserable, it could as well be other people. He had enough of that at school.

When some kid in London died (Carl Powers, eleven, swimmer, lost his shoes), Sherlock knew something was wrong with the picture painted by the papers. He tried to talk to the police but no one took him seriously. He phoned the boy’s parents but they told him to leave them alone. When he told Mummy, she listened and said to call Mycroft. His older brother was already establishing connections inside the government and might be able to help.

He didn’t though. Mycroft’s mind was occupied by things infinitely more important than his younger brother playing a detective. He told Sherlock to leave it alone and finally grow up.

So that was exactly what Sherlock did in the end. He grew up and gained another iron ring around his heart.

 

 

A new case does little to distract Sherlock from thinking about his saviour and the mysterious black ball. It’s hardly a complicated one, a murder that’s probably lovers’ quarrel (dull), but Sherlock’s been distracted and it takes him more time to focus, which frustrates him.

He turns the ball in the pocket of his coat and stares at the blood splatter, when his attention is suddenly drawn to the victim’s nails, one of them missing. Sherlock is tempted to take that as a clue, but he can _see_ it’s not the case. Nevertheless, it allows him to finally focus and notice that her nail isn’t the only thing that’s missing.

He straightens up and his satisfied grin seems to take over his face. The case has just become more interesting.

Serial killers should stop making it easy for him by taking _souvenirs_.

The ball warms up in his grip and seems to tell him that they should stop killing altogether.

“Well, they would be really bad at their jobs if they did,” he mutters to himself.

Sherlock doesn’t expect a gentle chuckle that echoes in his head.

 

 

He came to his senses on a boat with his wrists and ankles bound. His head hurt, and so did his wounded pride. He should have considered the possibility of a third party involved and he _did_ but he would have never thought that the danger could come in the form of a seemingly innocuous old lady (and he should have, judging by Mrs Hudson’s example). After the fact, it was rather obvious. The middle-class pattern was more than just a smokescreen then. It was about allies, even if they were oblivious to the true nature of their neighbours. That idiotic woman had probably taken him for a thief, and he would have appreciated the irony if he wasn’t about to be thrown into the river and left to drown.

His assailants seemed to assume the role of clichéd film villains and started _talking_ when they realized he’d woken up. It was hardly a wise move if he was to get out of this situation. The thieves clearly didn’t think he would and Sherlock was beginning to see the point in their reasoning.

When they finally pushed him out into the water, at least their talking stopped. Sherlock was left with the metal drumming of his heart.

 

 

The third and final ring enclosed his heart when he was twenty one. He barely endured the dullness of university life. He’d expected to find fewer idiotic people there, but he clearly had been giving humanity too much credit. The lectures were tedious and pointless, the professors hardly inspirational for _him_ , and his colleagues had no appreciation for his talents.

At first, he made a half-hearted attempt to blend in but Sherlock had never possessed Mycroft’s ability to engage in mindless chatter. It was slowly deteriorating his brain so he stopped caring about them and focused on perfecting his skills, solving old murder “mysteries” and sometimes the new ones too, from snippets in newspapers. Reading the life of his colleagues with a single glance, while educational for him, often resulted in his getting in trouble.

Nevertheless, it was bearable.

And then Mummy died. Father didn’t even show up on her funeral (maybe he was dead too, Sherlock hadn’t bothered to find out) and Mycroft seemed as indifferent and composed as ever. Sherlock’s heart hurt though, because Mummy was, had been, the only person that had ever believed in him and she wasn’t angry at him for revealing her husband’s infidelity the way Mycroft was. How did he not notice that she’d been unwell?

He turned to drugs after that. They allowed him to forget or, alternatively, focus completely on a different matter. It was invigorating, even if he had a few close calls. He also solved some more crimes when he was high on drugs, breaking into crime scenes and firing off deductions.

When the only officer in Scotland Yard with half a brain decided to form an alliance with _Mycroft_ (the stupid, meddling, fat git) and force Sherlock to go to rehab, his heart had already borne the third ring for quite some time.

 

 

He solves the case in less than twenty four hours. While in general more interesting, not all serial killers have the ability to make things difficult for him. And as they’ve been taking very specific rings as tokens they clearly don’t present much of a challenge for him.

The most interesting thing about that case is a mad chase he engages in with the culprit. The man has never had any real chance, since Sherlock has the outline of London streets saved on his hard drive. There is one moment though when the surge of adrenaline in his veins is more violent and the clicking of his heart becomes more erratic. It’s right after he’s impulsively ducked to the left, avoiding a surprise bullet that would no doubt test the metal confines of his heart.

(And since when does Sherlock do anything instinctively rather than with calculated logic?)

He is rather glad though that he didn’t die from such a petty criminal’s hand.

The ball in his pocket warms up furiously.

 

 

The knot on his wrists wasn’t a particularly complicated one. Sherlock was familiar with it and he won the battle against it more than once. He could untie it then too but he didn’t have much time. Other than that, the river made his fingers slippery and _clumsy_ , the cold water and bad circulation in his fingers didn’t help.

It was more and more likely Sherlock was going to die.

He briefly struggled against his bounds but it was rather pointless. So he concentrated on his breathing reflexes instead, determined to give Lestrade’s people more time to rescue him. And maybe, if he was lucky, he could make use of the current to surface.

He _wasn’t_ though. If anything, the river forced him further down and his brain still wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

He’d been counting the passing seconds and thus knew he’d been underwater for three minutes twenty nine seconds. He had a minute, maybe two _at best_ before he passed out, damn his smoking habit.

Right before his brain finally gave up and water invaded his mouth, he saw a man approaching him. Sherlock’s vision had been blurry from the start, his eyes straining to see anything in the dark waters of the Thames. Nevertheless, he was quite sure he saw a glimpse of blond hair and felt the touch of gentle hands before it all became even darker.

 

 

“What did I tell you about going after criminals on your own?” Lestrade snaps at him in his office. Sherlock just stands there, indifferent and already bored. “Haven’t you learned _anything_ from the time you _nearly drowned_?”

“Well, I’m still alive, am I not?” Sherlock says and grimaces in pain when the little ball gets angrily hot again.

“What now, Sherlock?” Lestrade asks, exasperated, clearly mistaking his grimace for something only his simple mind would be capable of creating.

The thing is, Sherlock hasn’t told anyone about the ball and he isn’t going to share it now. He chooses a more familiar approach instead.

“I was just thinking about what would Anderson do with my cadaver. That puts me off of wanting to be dead quite successfully, thank you.

Lestrade sighs.

“You think this is funny, Sherlock?” he asks. “One metre to the right, _one bloody metre_ , and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Small blessings,” Sherlock says and gets himself a hardly intimidating glare. “And I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

And that’s when he tells Lestrade.

 

 

The ball is angry with him. He doesn’t know why but it’s almost _fuming_ when he gets back to Baker Street. Sherlock thinks the string of profanities that has suddenly flooded his mind is rather hilarious. He pulls the ball out of his pocket and leaves it on the mantelpiece next to the skull, then proceeds to fetch his violin.

After he plays two Bach’s sonatas, the ball is still warm but there’s some resigned air around it and Sherlock just smirks.

 

 

When he came to on the shore, he was safely positioned, the water from his lungs mostly gone, and there was no one in sight that might resemble the man he saw in the water, although he could hear the approaching sirens. Late, as always.

There was a little glass ball in his coat pocket that hadn’t been there when he’d last checked though.

 

 

“You have a _what_?” Lestrade asks, blinking at him with confusion.

“You heard me perfectly, I’m not going to repeat myself.”

“You can’t have iron rings around your heart, that’s impossible.”

“Merely improbable, as I think I’ve just proved,” Sherlock says with the air of superiority. “If you don’t believe me, ask Molly Hooper, she works at Bart’s.”

“Yes, thank you, I _will_ ,” Lestrade assures him and sends him a pointed look.

Sherlock scowls.

“Can I go now?” he asks.

“Fine. But don’t try to experiment on your own heart, you idiot. I swear, someday you will not—“

But Sherlock has already stopped listening.

 

 

The thing is, Sherlock quite likes his skull. He’s used to talking to it and voicing his thoughts helps him focus. The skull never talks back, not _really_. Sherlock knows that what he hears are only his own ideas only clearer.

The ball is different. Is seems to _understand_ him, to _talk back_ and Sherlock is pretty sure (with the accuracy of 86,4%) that some thoughts that appear in his mind are not his own. They sound different, for one, and he usually rejects such inanities in the first selection process.

But they often make him focus on things that _are_ actually important.

And, to his great surprise and disbelief, the ball makes Sherlock smile.

 

 

He does not experiment on his heart.

He does not attempt to nearly drown again.

There’s still no sign of the man.

 

 

“This is completely mad!” Lestrade tells him, looking at his chest and Sherlock smirks like a mischievous cat.

The ball shares the sentiment.

 

 

He’s lying on the sofa, playing with the ball he’s had for exactly three weeks, six days and two hours. He’s in one of his black moods again; there wasn’t a decent case for him to solve in _weeks_ and all his experiments require some rest. There is nothing that could occupy his mind; the search of the man that rescued him is getting him nowhere. He starts to think that maybe he _did_ hallucinate the whole thing since not even his entire Homeless Network could find anything, not even a trace.

It leaves him with the ball that’s fascinating but also stubbornly silent that day. It has been getting progressively less expressive and now it doesn’t react in any way. Sherlock finds that he quite misses the foreign friendly voice in his head.

So the silence is rather frustrating, as is the utter coldness of the ball. Sherlock has got quite used to its warm touch on his palm and even angry hot fumes were better than that.

“Hello?” he tries, looking at the hedgehog. Its eyes are no longer sparkling. “Are you alright?” he asks and waits but there’s nothing. “This is ridiculous,” he mutters, suddenly feeling betrayed, like when his father left, like when Mycroft refused to take him seriously. But, in the end, it’s just a silly ball.

He throws it across the room before he can properly think about what he’s doing. Then it hits the wall and shatters and Sherlock thinks he might have broken a little bit too.

But then the black matter that’s been inside the ball shifts and forms a silhouette of a man and Sherlock is right beside him in a blink.

The man takes a deep breath and coughs. He’s visibly unwell: pale despite his sunburnt skin, with hollow eyes and a forced smile.

“That,” he says, “was a fucking terrible reward for saving your life. One more day in that ball and I probably would have died, thanks for that.”

He looks up at Sherlock and smiles a bit more widely.

“Though I have no idea _why_ throwing that stupid ball on the wall actually worked. I mean, who would have thought? The normal thing would be to... I don’t know... _kiss_ it or something.” He snorts. “He only told me it has to be broken—“ The man frowned. “Ah, he didn’t mean the spell,” he says and chuckles gently. Sherlock is still unable to utter a single word.

He didn’t hallucinate the whole thing, then. Unless _this_ is a hallucination in which case he will be very cross with the world when it ends.

“You saved me,” he finally says and winces because, oh, how he _loathes_ stating the obvious.

“Yeah, and then got transformed in a freakish hedgehog ball by some mad bastard who clearly holds a grudge against you. Any particular person that comes to mind?”

“A few,” Sherlock says, “dozens”.

“Right.” The man laughs again and finally manages to sit up. “You are completely insane, do you know that?” he asks and Sherlock doesn’t hear any reproach in his voice. Then the man looks at him, stands uncertainly and offers his hand. “I’m John. John Watson,” he says with a genuine grin that makes a crack in one of the rings around Sherlock’s heart.


End file.
